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The Gay Samaritan
A North Carolina pastor sternly warned against the danger of “butch” daughters, while advising dads to beat the gay out of their sons, literally:
The second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up! Give him a good punch.
Another pastor from the same state who, “Ain’t gonna vote for no homosexual-lover” (Obama?) has a plan to put queer folk behind an electric fence until they die out — all to keep them from reproducing any more gays and lesbians.
Hmmmm, aren’t gays and lesbians usually born to hetero parents?
Meanwhile, a toddler sings, “Ain’t No Homo Gonna Make It To Heaven” to wild applause from his Indiana congregation.
No surprise, then, that gays are persistently tormented and too often commit suicide. In fact, suicide rates are highest in conservative “values voters” states where hatred is preached over the bully pulpit.
Pastor and gay activist, Mel White, has founded Soulforce to resist religion-based oppression. He asks:
What other source of homophobia is there but six verses in the Bible? When Bible literalists preach that LGBT people are going to hell they become Christian terrorists. They use fear as their weapon, like all terrorists.
Against this, the story of the Good Samaritan rings ironic.
The parable tells of a man who is beaten, robbed, and left for dead. Religious leaders pass him by, but finally a Samaritan comes to his aid.
The moral is generally said to be “aid one another” or “judge people by their hearts and works, not by their religious rank.”
But why would a Master Teacher like Jesus construct a story relaying the obvious?
Jesus’ parables more often shocked audiences into thinking in entirely new ways. Keep in mind that Jesus constantly urged his hearers to see the worth and dignity of all, no matter how loathed — including Samaritans, who were despised. So consider this perspective which I’ve altered from a blog post written by a pro-gay rights Mormon (!!)
Imagine Jesus telling a story that forces you to think the unthinkable — to string together words that simply do not belong together: “good” and “[insert epithet of choice].” If we want to understand how Jesus’ words invaded and overthrew the pious and staid beliefs of his hearers, we might imagine him telling a Christian congregation in North Carolina or Indiana the parable of the Good Gay Man who stopped to help a victim near death after a Catholic Bishop, a Rabbi, and a Christian Pastor first passed him by.
The moral of the Good Samaritan? Love gays, and anyone else whose humanity is not fully appreciated.
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Teen Cougars at Prom
A cougar is a hot “older woman” who pursues men twenty years her junior, right? Well, lately teen cougars have been asking junior guys to senior prom.
So why do young women increasingly want relationships with younger men? Once was, girls only dated older guys. As one mom observing the phenomenon explains:
Back in my prom days (when the big slow dance was still “Stairway to Heaven”), I went with a boy who was not just taller than me, but older as well. O.K., I was only a few months younger than him, but that still mattered to my friends and me. We would never have even considered venturing out to the prom, let alone the school parking lot, with a boy in a lower grade, unless we were baby-sitting him.
Why the change? It may be that we no longer expect guys to be “ranked” so much more highly than girls anymore.
We’re not completely over gender ranking, which places males above females. You still see it when a man avoids dating or marrying a highly successful woman, since that success gives her higher rank than him. Or, when guys do girl-things like hopscotch they’re “lowering themselves” and taunted as sissies, wimps and fags — or girls. But girls can climb trees, play with trucks and be tomboys with little worry. And, girls can wear pants but guys can’t wear dresses. Girls aren’t demeaning themselves by doing boy-stuff.
Traditionally, women have wanted someone “older and wiser” as sixteen-year-old Liesl sang to Rolf in The Sound of Music:
I need someone
Older and wiser
Telling me what to do
You are 17 going on 18
I’ll depend on you
But suddenly girls don’t need someone older and wiser.
Furthermore, these girls like “nice guys” who are more respectful and nicer to date than the dominant “bad boys” that girls are thought to prefer.
When they get to college upper-class women often continue favoring younger men:
Here at Dartmouth we have a saying, ‘Get the guy before he pledges’ (because) that way you grab them before they are corrupted by fraternity brothers.
That would be frat boys who work hard to create a “superior man” status by demeaning women as bitches and sluts, and who maintain their independence and invulnerability by avoiding relationships with women, choosing to conquer them in one-night-stands, instead.
But back in high school a senior girl simply reasons, “The senior guys at my school tend to like to go out with the younger girls, so now I guess we are doing the same with younger guys.”
I’m all for gender parity. Why not?
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Believe You’re Beautiful – Others Will, Too
Back in college I knew a girl who did not seem to fit our cultural notion of “pretty.” But then a really attractive guy began dating her. Holding my own “lookism” bias, I didn’t get it. What did he see in her?
What happened next surprised me more. “Plain Jane” transformed into a beautiful young woman. It’s as though she hadn’t known her beauty, and couldn’t show it to the world until she felt someone else see it in her. And whether he actually did doesn’t matter. She believed that he did, and she was transformed.
This reminded me of a story my mom told me. An “unattractive” friend of hers went to college in the 1950s, when a girl’s worth was tied to how many dates she got. (Back then women didn’t sleep with the men they dated, so the only reputation they got was “popular.”)
Anyway, a frat decided to joke around by getting all the brothers to eagerly ask her out. Once again an ugly duckling transformed into a swan and the men began asking her out for real.
If you want to be beautiful, believe that you are.
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
– From Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Woman”
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Crying Religious Intolerance While Violating Rights
Last week Notre Dame and more than 40 other Catholic institutions announced they are filing lawsuits suing Obama on the contraception mandate. As usual, they’re claiming that the government is running all over their religious rights.
Meanwhile, bills have been proposed claiming to protect the conscience of employers to opt out of providing coverage that goes against their religious convictions, including the Bunt Amendment and a similar bill in the Arizona Legislature.
Are Catholic Bishops and other employers the only people who hold religious beliefs? Or the only ones whose religious beliefs count?
You’d think so to hear the debate on the matter.
In the face of this war on women progressives have rarely questioned whose religious rights are in play. And so conservatives have undisputedly argued that employers – Bishops or otherwise – must be free to follow their conscience. But that leaves women forced to follow the conscience of their employers. The argument is then framed as “right to contraception” vs “religious rights” which makes the latter stronger since that is undisputedly in the constitution.
Maybe women’s religious beliefs are ignored because the perspective of the powerful tends to trump the perspective of the powerless. The powerful have a history of airing their beliefs and they can bully from their pulpits. The Catholic Church has historically been powerful. Women have not. Business leaders have historically been powerful. Women have not.
I was heartened to hear Salon editor, Joan Walsh, finally make the reverse argument last week, five months after the start of this debate. She pointed out that the Priests have religious freedom backwards as they try to force their religion on everyone else. They and the Republican Right are working to impose their religion on the country. Maureen Dowd and the New York Times editorial page have thankfully followed suit.
Shouldn’t the pious be the ones to sacrifice for their convictions instead of asking everyone else to sacrifice for their beliefs?
And when there is a conflict, the religious beliefs and conscience of those whose bodies, health and well-being are directly affected should certainly trump the conscience of those who simply hold the purse strings.
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So Nice We Let Others Hurt Us
By Anonymous
Some people are so nice that they let others hurt them. I have been hurt. But I wasn’t nice.
I thought of this as I read a piece called, “Betrayed by the Angel,” by Debra Anne Davis.
When Debra was little, a boy named “Hank C” kept jabbing his pencil into her arm as she sat in her third-grade classroom. It hurt, but she didn’t want to be mean. When she finally got up the nerve to tell her teacher, she was told, “You go back to your seat and tell me if he does it again.” She sat mum.
At age 25 a stranger rapped on her door. She opened it a crack and immediately wanted to slam it. The man scared her.
But she didn’t want to be rude.
He forced the door open and pushed her against a wall.
I want to open the door and shut him outside and then slam the door in his face, rude or not, I don’t care now. Frankly, I don’t push him aside with much determination. I’ve made a mental choice to be rude, but I haven’t been able to muster the physical bluntness the act requires.
And she was raped.
When Debra became a teacher she asked her students what their parents taught them that they would not teach their children. One student said, “My parents always told me to be kind to everyone. I won’t teach my children that. It’s not always good to be kind to everyone.”
Debra wishes she had learned that lesson sooner. Now she knows she shouldn’t always be nice.
My story neither starts nor ends like hers.
I have a memory that I wish were only a bad dream.
I wasn’t feeling well and stayed home from school that day. Soon after my mother left to pick up my cousin from school, my uncle came home. It happened so fast. He bribed me to let him in my room. I was young and didn’t understand why he wanted to do that. So I let him. He pinned me to the bed and started kissing my neck. I told him that my mom would be home any minute. He stopped and bribed me not to tell anyone. I agreed just so he would leave me alone.
I had seen TV shows where children were raped and the rapist warned that he would kill the family if they said anything, but it never happened. So I did tell my mom what happened as soon as she got home, crying through the whole thing. My uncle never touched me again.
I believe that how I reacted had a lot to do with where I grew up, in East Palo Alto, surrounded by violence. A place where you must stand up for yourself.
Like Debra, I still find it hard to talk to men I don’t know. Not because I don’t want to, but out of fear. But unlike Debra, I do speak out loud and clear because I want to be heard.
I agree that parents should not teach their children to always be nice.
This post was written by one of my students, who asked to remain anonymous.
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Lose Virginity, Lose Self-Esteem?
When women lose their virginity, they can lose self-esteem, too, experiencing a small drop. That’s what a recent Penn State study reveals.
Why?
Women college students were surveyed over time. Before sex the women felt increasingly good about their bodies. But after first sex they felt worse. Looks like when they’re in bed women start worrying about whether they look good enough. Masters and Johnson tagged the phenomenon of watching yourself from a third person perspective instead of focusing on sexual sensations or your partner, “spectatoring.” Women are much more prone, being the objectified. Then, feeling they don’t measure up, self-worth drops.
Other usual suspects may also affect self-esteem, including the double standard that provokes worries about labels like slut and whore. Tracy Clark-Flory over at salon.com points to a 1995 study that found “women were significantly more likely to report that their first sexual experience left them feeling less pleasure, satisfaction, and excitement than men, and more sadness, guilt, nervousness, tension, embarrassment, and fear.” Even now women continue to experience that bind.
The double standard strikes again when women feel used, unappreciated, and worried about reputations after short flings or one-night stands.
Meanwhile, a study I recently posted finds 35% of women in strong partnerships feeling sad, anxious, restless, or irritable, after sex. Researchers don’t know why. Commenters, speculating on their own experience with the phenomenon, fingered sexual repression or difficulties with orgasm (which are related to repression) as culprit.
Studies repeatedly find that women are less likely than men to enjoy sex. Other research suggests the problem is not biologically based, or inevitable. Women in sex-positive cultures enjoy sexuality a great deal.
We are going to have to move beyond sexism for women to reclaim their sexuality. That would benefit both women and men.
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My Son Likes Girl Stuff. Is He Gay?
Random Moms across America think they know: My son has got to be gay. He wears khakis today but wore a dress to school from age 4 to 6; he used to do ballet and still doesn’t like sports; in preschool he was all about playing princess but now is all about Pokemon; and, in spite of the clear gender divisions in third grade, he plays with both girls and boys. I mean, what straight boy is into that kinda freaky gender mash-up?
This mom knows better, and she goes on to remark that, actually, butch boys can grow up to be gay, and fem boys can grow up to be straight.
Interestingly, few moms worry that their little tomboys will grow up to be lesbians.
But this mom gets LOADS of advice on how to turn her son “boyish.” Take away the girly toys and clothes, and enroll him in sports!
So much worry about girly boys.
Yet what we think of as “girl stuff” turns out to be “boy stuff” in other times and places.
Boys shouldn’t wear pink? Years ago the country staged a great debate on whether pink or blue should designate girls or boys. Some advocated pink for boys – such a robust color! Blue is so dainty.
The Cabbage Patch craze of the last generation led a lot of boys to want dolls. One of my little boy cousins got one for Christmas. Today most people would call him a manly man, complete with wife and baby. (And G.I. Joe is a doll, too.)
Ancient Roman men wore skirts, though the one on the left is armored! (A likely relief to some macho men out there.) Other Roman men wore dresses (robes).
And we mustn’t forget men in tights, circa “Romeo and Juliet.”
Moving on to the court of the “Sun King,” Louis XIV, we find him wearing lots of lace, ruffles, curls, and color. And gracefully posed!
The American founding fathers had considerably less glitz, but they still wore more color, lace, ruffles, and curls than most men today would be caught dead in. They also hired instructors to help present a more graceful appearance. One of my male students asked, “Ok, but what did the manly men wear?” This is what they wore!
In more modern times, Scottish men can still be partial to skirts, though they call them kilts. Below are traditional and more recent versions of the garment.
Judges, priests, and scholars also continue to wear “dresses” today.
Perhaps the most surprising expressions of manhood come from a culture entirely different from our own: the Wodaabe of Nigeria in Africa. There, men adorn themselves with makeup and jewelry. Because white eyes and teeth are part of the beauty ideal for men, they often roll their eyes and show their teeth to show off these features.
In our own time and place there’s Rod Stewart, who seems to be strongly hetero by all accounts. But check out these shots:
There’s a difference between sex and gender. Sex is biologically-based. It’s made up of our genes (xx for girls, xy for boys), hormones (testosterone, estrogen), anatomy (vagina, penis, breasts, etc.). But gender is all made up. Or what cultures make up to mark biological differences.
If clothing, makeup, jewelry and toys aren’t naturally “boy” or “girl” things, how can doing “boy” or “girl” things mark sexual orientation?
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Men’s Mags Celebrate Varied Body Types
From time to time men’s magazines exalt body types that vary from the tall, skinny, buxom shape they typically flaunt. True, the lovely ladies on Maxim’s and FHM’s “Hot 100” lists look pretty much the same, but it’s nice to see a little branching out now and again, so let’s celebrate what we can.
Small Busted Bombshells
While buxom breasts are a highly appreciated part of the female form, Mila Kunis was just named #3 on Maxim’s Hot 100, which considers their picks “the definitive list” of the world’s most beautiful women. Mila also made #9 on FHM where male readers vote for their faves. Also on that list are Kristin Stewart, Paris Hilton, Pippa and her sister Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge. And Keira Knightly once made FHM’s #1 hottest hottie.
“Un-Skinny” Stunners
Slim figures are also admired, but Kim Kardashian, along with Scarlett Johansson and pear-shaped Jennifer Lopez, made FHM’s top 100 this year. And, Christina Hendricks, “Joan” of Mad Men, was picked as a “Girls We Love” covergirl.
When women see men gaping in appreciation of Joan’s full figure, I’m sure they are better
able to appreciate their own curves. And when Mila Kunis asked Justin Timberlake if her breasts were too small in “Friends With Benefits,” I’m sure plenty of women were happy to hear him respond, “They’re breasts, aren’t they?” No problem. And then he falls in love.
Opening up the ideal is good for both women and men, even if there is still far to go.
When a woman sees herself as beautiful her self-esteem rises. It’s also easier to feel sexy. And when she feels sexier her interest in sex rises, too. She isn’t distracted, wondering if she’s attractive enough. And, women tend to get aroused by feeling that their partners see them as alluring. Plus, when men see that the ladies they love resemble Maxim’s Top 100 in some way, they can more easily see the beauty of their partners.
I suspect most women overestimate how harshly men see them and I suspect that most men are more accepting of women’s bodies than women are, themselves. So that’s good news ladies.
Our society’s ideals don’t have to determine our self-esteem, but they usually play a heavy role both in how we see ourselves and in how others see us. And so while we can work to move beyond the superficial, we’d all benefit if our culture expanded its notions of beauty, too.
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Vibrators Were Invented to Cure Hysteria
Hollywood has made a major motion picture that’s all about vibrators and women’s orgasm. Who da thunk? In a series of new movies, women’s sexuality is making its film debut.
“Hysteria,” tells how vibrators were created. Dr. Joseph Mortimer Granville fabricated the device around 1880 to cure “hysterical paroxysm,” a condition that had been concerning the medical community since Hippocrates.
Symptoms included anxiety, sleeplessness, irritability, nervousness, fluid retention, insomnia and erotic fantasy, and was thought to result from a blocked reproductive system. The cure involved clitoral stimulation to orgasm. But women should not necessarily administer the cure themselves. As The Guardian explained:
Avicenna, the Muslim founder of early modern medicine, advised women not to treat themselves for the condition. It was, he wrote, “a man’s job, suitable only for husbands and doctors.”
So strangely, vibrators were created as a medical device having nothing to do with women’s pleasure – or so the good doctors thought. Sex, in fact, was believed to have little to do with women’s satisfaction at that time.
Vibrator as medicine and not sex aid? That’s probably why it managed to be the fifth electrical device to be mass marketed at the turn of the last century, right after the sewing machine, the fan, the kettle and the toaster. And that’s certainly why Sears was selling it in their 1918 catalog.
In bringing women’s sexuality to the screen, Hollywood has changed direction. There, sexuality had always been about men’s, with women’s body parts the focus of male desire.
The notion that sex is for men, while women look good for them, seems to have real-world impacts. In casual college hookups women often give men blow jobs while they go without, reasoning that men need sex but they don’t so much. Or, Caroline Heldman, Assistant Professor at Occidental College, found that women are often focused on how their bodies create men’s pleasure while ignoring how they feel sexually, themselves.
Meanwhile, women’s sexuality is thought more dirty and unspeakable, with lots of choice words to describe the sexual woman (slut, ho, skank…). Or, Viagra ads appear on TV but aids for the female libido are off limits. Including vibrators, which have even been banned in some states. Not surprisingly, “Hysteria” took seven years to make because producers balked. As producer Tracey Becker, explained,
When it came right down to it, we had this script which dealt with these very blush-inducing themes and most of the time it was in the hands of a male executive, who had the veto power.
With a slate of female directors making films like “Hysteria,” “Take This Waltz,” “Elles,” “2 Days in New York,” and on the small screen, “Sex and the City” and “Girls,” women’s sexuality is beginning to come out of the Hollywood closet.
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Women Don’t Rape, They’re Merely Insatiable
A 43-year-old German man met a 47-year-old woman in a bar. He went to her home and had sex with her, but when he wanted to leave she trapped him and demanded more. Seeing no other choice he agreed, expecting that afterwards she would let him go. But more wasn’t enough. Desperate, he fled out a balcony and cried for help.
She met her next victim on a bus. After his ordeal he was found “sobbing in the street” and begging the police, “Oh God, it was hell. I can’t walk. Please help me.” Sounds like she wounded him to prevent his escape.
Police charged her with sexual assault and illegal restraint. Yet the press is not calling her what she is: a rapist.
Beneath a photo of a couple in bed, the Mirror described the woman as a “nymphomaniac” while the Province posted the story next to a couple pictured blissfully in bed, and called the woman merely “insatiable.”
The inability to see this as rape likely stems from stereotypes about what rape is and who commits it.
Some people simply can’t conceive that men can be raped or that women can rape men. And that is likely mixed up with notions that men always want sex, and are – or should be – insatiable, themselves. And then there’s the belief that men can always overpower women, regardless of “technical help.”
Other stereotypes hold for both male and female victims. Such as, “What do you expect if you go to his/her apartment?” Or, “Once you say ‘yes’ you can’t say ‘no.’”
Some believe “rape myths” (false notions about rape) because that’s what they’ve always heard. Others hold to them because they make them feel safe. If a woman believes that only “bad girls” get raped, then she can feel more safe and secure. If a man believes that women can’t rape men, then he can feel secure, too.
Some just don’t get that rape means “sex without consent.”
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